It was already a little hot in Qingzhou in June, and the bright sunshine was scorching the cement road and some steaming people.

Xiao Ming returned to the palace for lunch and waited for Lu Tong in the imperial study.

In the afternoon, when the hour hand of the pendulum clock pointed at two o'clock, Lu Tong arrived outside the imperial study room on time, and there was a young man about thirty years old in his grade with him.

The young man was wearing a white long gown from Qingzhou University, holding a bunch of things that Xiao Ming was very familiar with.

"See the Emperor."

After entering the imperial study room, Lu Tong and the others saluted Xiao Ming.

After getting up, Lu Tong introduced to Xiao Ming: "Your Majesty, this student from Qingzhou University is named Liu Chuanzhi, and the lower official handed over the rubber to them."

"Liu Chuanzhi? A good name." Xiao Ming said with a smile.

"Thank you for your praise," Liu Chuanzhi said a little trembling, obviously very nervous.

Xiao Ming had a smile in his eyes. These people who were devoted to scientific research were not dealing with outsiders for a long time, so their characteristics were similar.

He said: "You don't have to be nervous. I'm not a human-eating tiger. Are these rubber products you made?"

Only then did Liu Chuanzhi remember the rubber in his arms and said hurriedly: "Yes...yes, the emperor, according to the information provided by the emperor, Caomin successfully mastered the method of vulcanized rubber, and combined with the metal molds provided by the Equipment Department, a batch of rubber products have been manufactured."

Xiao Ming nodded. The rubber sent by the Dutch can only be called raw rubber. This raw rubber is very sticky and easy to break, so it cannot be used in industry.

The vulcanized rubber is called cooked rubber. This type of rubber has no problems with raw rubber, has high elasticity, heat resistance, tensile strength, and will not dissolve in organic solvents. Contemporary rubber products are basically vulcanized rubber.

Looking at Liu Chuanzhi's arms, Xiao Ming's smile became stronger and stronger. In fact, shaping rubber is not very difficult, because rubber will turn into liquid at high temperatures, which is similar to molten steel.

Steel can be molded using iron molding, and this rubber can naturally be molded using iron molding. This is also the contemporary way to shape Xiao Ming.

The only thing to do is vulcanize the rubber before shaping.

This vulcanization requires the use of a substance as a crosslinking agent, which is sulfur. Vulcanized rubber of different quality can be produced according to time and temperature. There are many ways to vulcanize, and the easiest method is to mix the two and heat them directly.

"Your Majesty, this is a tire, this is a hose, this is a piston..." Liu Chuanzhi took out all the products he brought with him as if he had known them.

Xiao Ming took it from him one by one, looked it over and over before letting it go.

For him, rubber is a crucial part of industrial development, including soles, water warming bags and elastic bands used in daily life.

Gloves used in medical use, blood transfusions, various tires used in transportation, conveyor belts used in industrial use, drainage and irrigation hose used in agriculture, sealing equipment used in scientific experiments, aircraft, tanks, cannons used in military use, etc. are all inseparable from rubber.

The West can pull the East far away in technology, largely because they control rubber. Unfortunately, like the present, the rubber of this era is still controlled by Europe.

Although he got some rubber tree seeds from the Netherlands, it took a long process to go from seed to tree.

Of course, he also has a solution, which is rubber grass, but according to the data, the origin of rubber grass is in Yili, Xinjiang in contemporary times, and in this era, rubber grass is obviously still under the control of the barbarians.

Only when he drove away the barbarians could he plant rubber grass in this area, but it seemed like a difficult problem to build this place and keep it.

Therefore, the most suitable way for him at the moment is to buy rubber from Europeans.

As for occupying South America, it still takes a long way to go. Even if he now has a fleet of ironclad ships, it also requires a fixed port to provide fresh water and coal from the Great Chongqing Kingdom to South America. Otherwise, his fleet would be paralyzed halfway before he arrived in America.

"That's great, so good." Facing one rubber product after another, Xiao Ming was inevitably excited. With rubber, many machines can achieve it.

He believes that the most important problem to be solved at present is the transportation problem.

The deepest experience this era gave Xiao Ming was that if you want to be rich, you should build roads first. Only when transportation is convenient can the exchange of various resources be quick.

Lu Tong and Liu Chuanzhi looked at Xiao Ming excitedly, with a strong smile on their faces.

Xiao Ming put down rubber products such as medical blood transfusions and said, "What reward do you want?"

"Emperor, this rubber is just a small task. Relying on the information provided by the emperor, the subordinates dare not ask for rewards." Lu Tong laughed.

Xiao Ming ignored him and said, "You don't want it, and Liu Chuanzhi doesn't want it either?"

Lu Tong scratched his head and laughed, while Liu Chuanzhi looked embarrassed and opened his mouth and said nothing in the end.

Seeing this, Xiao Ming said, "Liu Chuanzhi, in the future, the rubber from the Great Yu Kingdom will be handed over to you. Now you naturally don't have to be polite. Let's do this. In order to allow you to concentrate on rubber production, I will reward you with a thousand taels of silver and give you another fifty acres of farmhouse. How about it?"

"Thank you for your kindness!" Liu Chuanzhi shivered excitedly when he heard this.

Before that, he was just a poor scholar. The reason he entered Qingzhou University was because his family had no spare money to support him in Beijing for the exam. However, he did not expect that this decision would bring him another opportunity.

Xiao Ming helped Liu Chuanzhi up, who bowed to thank him, and he said, "I am not a stingy person. As long as you can do things steadily and contribute to the Great Yu Kingdom, titles, land, and money are not a problem. Now that my army has seized a large area of ​​land outside the pass, you don't have to worry that I have no land to reward."

Liu Chuanzhi nodded deeply.

He asked the two of them some questions about rubber, and Xiao Ming asked them to go back for the time being.

When the two left, he immediately sat down and picked up the pen.

Now this pen can only be written while dipped in ink. Now with rubber, he can finally have a pen that can absorb water. After this, he is planning to recommend a pen office to all officials in the Great Yu Kingdom, saving time writing calligraphy and paper waste.

After taking a blank piece of paper, Xiao Ming drew a structure diagram of the bicycle on it. Unlike the bicycles that were very strange in the West at the beginning, Xiao Ming directly designed the mature 28-bar confidence bike, which is the cross-beam bicycle in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

This bike has a triangle stable lever structure in the middle, which can withstand more weight.
Chapter completed!